The present invention relates to electrical connectors, and, more particularly, to connectors employed for making electrical connection to devices enclosed in watertight packages or enclosures.
Electrical connections often must be made through watertight enclosures. For example, modern irrigation control systems often employ an electronic decoder located at or close to an electrically operated water valve. The decoder is usually positioned in a valve box which is subject to flooding, so that the decoder must be housed in a completely watertight package and electrical connections have to be made through the package walls. Fused glass hermetic bulkhead connectors are available for this purpose, but they are relatively expensive for such applications as irrigation control systems.
Previous attempts to provide a low-cost feed-through wire connection to a watertight electrical package have typically utilized a potting cup through which an insulated wire conductor is passed, and which is later filled with a theoretically waterproof potting material. In practice, however, water can "wick" along the wires by capillary action, if there is a small nick or crack in the wire insulation. Moreover, many potting compounds will provide a leakage path around the interface between the wire insulation and the potting compound, or may even have an open-cell structure which itself provides a leakage path. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that there is still a real need for an effective low-cost, feed-through electrical connector which is completely watertight. The present invention fulfills this need.